The nurse who force-fed her baby to death was jailed yesterday for three years.
Gloria Dwomoh, said to be obsessed with the weight of ten-month-old daughter Diamond, used a small milk jug to tip baby rice, African corn porridge and chicken soup into her mouth.
The 31-year-old denied causing or allowing the baby’s death, insisting the method was ‘perfect’ and widely used in her home country, Ghana.
She admitted that Diamond often vomited after being fed, but said it did not worry her because her three other children had done the same.
She had been warned about the dangers of the practice more than two years before Diamond died in 2010 when she developed pneumonia after food got into her lungs.
In what was thought to be the first case of its type, Dwomoh, who worked at St Thomas’s Hospital in South London, was
unanimously convicted after a three-week trial at the Old Bailey last month.
Her 37-year-old husband, who cannot be named, was cleared.
The Common Serjeant of London, Judge Brian Barker, said the case was ‘truly rare and truly tragic’.
He told her: ‘You come from a background where the attempted feeding from a cup or a jug where a child is held may have been traditional.
‘But by the time of Diamond’s birth you must have known in this country, the feeding of young children in this way against her will was wrong and dangerous.
‘Social services has been involved with the family … and it appears you paid little attention to what they said.’
He added: ‘You are a trained nurse. You must have known the importance when feeding the recipient, whatever their age, should stay in control of their intake.
‘At best, it was a misguided obsession but it was a determined obsession and must have caused prolonged and daily distress to your daughter.’
The public gallery was packed with family and friends, and her barrister Trevor Burke told the court her husband had a petition with 1,000 signatures, saying she was a loving mother.
During her trial she told the jury: ‘I knew cup feeding was entirely perfect because I have seen it myself being used in Ghana with my own eyes. I would do nothing to harm her. I was scared.’
Source: DailyMail
As a Ghanaian girl who has been raised in London and has a new born of my own, I am not surprised by this story. It is actually ironic that I have stumbled across it as I have been in a battle of wills over the appropriate way to handle my new born with my more traditional mother in law who is also Ghanaian.
Science has given us the ability to understand things about children we could never know before and that some traditional methods, though widely used, can be harmful. It is about time Ghanaians started taking heed of some warnings when it comes to child rearing and this sad death is a terrible thing that could have been avoided had the mother listened to advice instead of forcing a child to eat based on traditional methods that did not suit the baby.
It is terrible and shocking because the mother in this case was a health care professional!
I am glad I listen to my own instincts now instead of blindly following traditional methods recommended to me by the older women around me, even if I get constantly told off for not following their advice.
That isn’t to say I think western science is absolutely right all the time. There are things in our traditional methods that we should hold onto because sometimes they can work wonders where western science and medicine cannot help.
A sad story for a family here. I hope people learn from this in our community.
This is some sad story, but i guess she should have known better since shes a nurse herself, the fact that they practice this method in Ghana doesnt mean its allowed in the UK, else we’ll be spanking our kids but the law doesn’t allow that, smh, this saying applies to this case ‘when in rome u do what the romans do’ period.